Photography

Optimism Is Fighting Reality

We refinanced the mortgage recently to get a super awesome interest rate, and while we were re-doing things we took a little money out to build the garage, add the front porch, put some pretty trim in the kitchen, and get the basement that "finished" status it's been longing for. For the record, it's not nearly as much money as you'd think it would be. We are King and Queen of Do-It-Yourself, and plan to do all this on a budget that makes even other Do-It-Yourselfers scoff in disbelief. Maybe we're living in delusion, but at least we're happy here. Mostly because we haven't started any of these fun Do-It-Yourself projects yet, so the happy hasn't been tampered with yet.

The garage is taking the lion's share of our funds, of course. And we are very excited about this addition, because it means we'll be done scraping ice off windshields in winter. There will be no more preheating the van just so our hands won't freeze fast to the wheel. It will be glorious. Truly.

For those of you who do not live here in The Vortex of Perpetual Winter, I'm going to have to point out that this garage will not happen until next spring. While we would absolutely love to have this be the winter that we do not deal with ice on windows, it is way too late in the season to begin a building project. The moment we dig a hole for a foundation, two feet of snow will fill it up. We will never get shingles to adhere in sub-zero temperatures. We do not build things in winter.

So because we are putting off the project, Sam said this will be the winter that isn't. His theory is that because we are not planning to build because of the weather, the weather will not happen. You know what I said?

HAHAHAHAHAHA (gasp) HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Now, I'm an optimist. An incurable one at that. But we've had two significant snowfalls already this season, and it's just now mid-November. I'm very afraid for what this winter will be. Very afraid, indeed. I mean, just tonight we had this:

And obviously, it was so beautiful that I had to run outside and capture it forever in digital image. Ignore the eyesore of the pipeline in the foreground, and focus instead on the gorgeous sunset. It's a beautiful autumn day, is it not? And then a literal 10 minutes later, there was this:

The worst thing about this picture is that one minute before I got my camera, the snow was an actual blizzard condition. Those pines on the far right were very invisible inside the swirling white blast directly from the North Pole. But that is definitely snow, not fog. And it definitely laid on the ground, blanketing things in white. Again. And it's not even mid-November.

So for the record, if this actually is the winter that doesn't happen here in the Vortex of Perpetual Winter, I will happily take the blame for it. And if you live anywhere near me, you can thank me if we get no more snow or nastiness this winter. The optimist in me wants to believe this could happen more than a 3 year old wants to believe in Santa Claus.